South Korea presents electrobuses with wireless charging

23.08.2013 11:21

The future-as least as it was described in sci-fi novels- is coming at us at full speed. Here is an example: a couple of days ago electrobuses were launched in South Korea. These vehicles are like trolleybuses but with a wireless power supply line. So far, there only two electrobuses, and they ply the streets of Gumi. It’s important to mention that this type of electric vehicle is a development of a South Korean Research Institute, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology's (KAIST).

The system is called OnlineElectricVehicle (OLEV) and the way it works is rather simple. Electric power strips that charge the vehicle are buried under the road surface and work as a kind of inductive charger. To feed power into the bus the distance between the road and the bottom of the bus must be about 20 cm.

The great thing is that the length of power strips installed under the road is generally 5%-15% of the entire road, so it  requires only a few sections of the road to be rebuilt with the embedded cables. Inductive charger resolves the problem of finding high-capacity big-size batteries for this type of vehicles. Thanks to OLEV the electrobuses have a relatively small battery which is powerful enough to keep the bus going.

The developers claim the efficiency of the system to be 85%, which is not bad at all. Also, the developers note that all the characteristics of the electromagnetic field are normal, and people walking along a road, or traveling by electric buses are not in danger. After the successful operation of the two OLEV buses by the end of this year, Gumi City plans to provide ten more such buses by 2015.

Source: http://habrahabr.ru/post/189238/

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